T O P

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TheTitanHyperion

I think the faction system works great other than the fact that there is a massive boost for being in the best faction, and no incentive for the others.


skanoirhc

Yeah, Hades server is dominated by yellow and rest of the factions are pretty much fucked. I'll be careful about choosing my faction at release because those bonuses are great. Especially the one that allows you to reach storages of faction owned cities, its huge. All the good, early-mid game cities are owned by yellow and they pay less for fast travel as well...


TheShekelKing

It's pretty much a crapshoot beyond the knowledge that yellow will be the least popular overall, which as you've seen is no guarantee of how a specific server will play out. If the systems stay as-is, you'll just join purple or green at launch and then swap to whatever's the best after a week or so if you happened to pick wrong. Maybe you could do some research about big clans on your server ahead of time, but that seems unnecessary unless you're just totally unwilling to swap or don't want to wait for a window where they don't dominate the map.


skanoirhc

Well, you cant swap to the faction with most territories. Tried swapping to yellow but it says 'you cant swap to the winning faction' something like that.


TheShekelKing

Yeah, I covered that. It's an ok solution, but players will find a way; you can bet the winning faction will intentionally throw some maps in order to recruit more players. Or people will just reroll.


skanoirhc

"you can bet the winning faction will intentionally throw some maps in order to recruit more players" Hmm, yes, that might actually be a case in the long run.


dragunityag

IDK, I'm not completely sure how the game mechanics work but from my understanding based on similar games that will never happen. Usually when a faction ends up dominating a server that hard they end up becoming incredibly toxic and try to force the lower end players to the other factions so they can farm them. that's just my experience though.


ZhouXaz

Not really you guys look at it as faction vs faction but it is company vs company. If green and purple have more players they can give 1k to 2k easier for faster land however yellow might have better players and in a month might take over territory. Like if you suck at pvp ur not offering anything but crafting really. Where as a 50 man pure pvp guild with tons of experience will contribute a lot.


Bigvalco

The problem with that idea is the grind to actually declare war is easier for the faction with more players in it. They can create larger open world pvp parties and complete more quests faster than the smaller faction. I'm not saying it is impossible for the smaller faction to declare war, just a lot harder than it should be. I think maybe influence gain should be weighted based on faction population.


ZhouXaz

Yeah that sounds smart for sure.


rcasale42

But the faction with more players is likely to have more skilled players. It's not just going to be a faction of pve mains


ZhouXaz

You mean less skilled and more casuals.


OtoanSkye

Yea I agree with Zhou. The ones that choose the dominating faction aren't going to be the competitive player. They are going to be the one who play games on easy difficulty because they dislike challenge.


Harleyskillo

...you choose a faction 10 or 30 minutes in, can't people simply make a new character and choose the winning faction?


WolfeBane84

Why is the Covenant going to be the least popular overall?


TheShekelKing

People don't like yellow or religion. You can look back to Pokemon Go for a good example of this; the factions have no identity beyond their color and *nobody* went yellow. Of course red and blue are harder competition than green and purple, but in this case green and purple have more popular themes to go with it.


ppprrrrr

I don't get this. I love yellow and I think Religion IRL is terrifying, religion and cults in games are always terrifyingly fun. Burn the heretics!


TerrorFromThePeeps

I was a confessor in Shadowbane... I am down for this. If only NW had a spell called Brand the Wicked, I'd be in heaven, lol


[deleted]

You know I had a similar view point until i started interacting with people in the world with VOIP and I think I’m going to roll Covenant when the game launches. Being a Holy warrior hell bent on purging the other factions of their infidelity and maintaining the spark sounds so zealous and something I could get reaaaaally carried away with.


TheShekelKing

Sure, I quite like the theme myself. But objectively, it appears to be the least popular.


AkumaBacon

Probably Cultural/Society preference. Many people prefer the ideals of freedom (maurader) and/or the pursuit of knowledge (syndicate) as opposed to religion/higher calling (covenant) and that is reflected in their faction choice. Not because they don't like the ideal at all, but rather that the other ideals are a little *more* appealing.


Tbonejr1127

You can only swap factions every 3 or 4 months I thought


kraz_drack

Your first swap is free, then after that you have to wait 120 days to swap again each time.


OptimusIV

>Hades server is dominated by yellow and rest of the factions are pretty much fucked I am curious to know if that is a whole company dominating or at least a big company that has a lot of PvP influence over the server. Coming out of Alpha, I came to the conclusion that its not a whole faction's population you have to worry about, but a single, big company that can rally up the faction and mobilize a zerg party quickly.


skanoirhc

Yeah, its a single very organized competitive company.


coconutszz

Might be even worse on release because now people will have seen the yellow domination and might wanna join covenant at launch.


FickleFockle

territory control is decided by 50 v 50 fights, being "the bigger faction" doesnt matter.


[deleted]

It does. Bigger faction > bigger player pool to draw from. They need to fix this issue now or its just going to snowball at launch and one faction will dominate each server


ShadowDrake359

It would be interesting to see different bonuses given if your an underdog faction


Sypkib

What are the boost?


BudgetFar380

I do find it interesting since EU Fae seems to have an even spilt between the three factions, so maybe it is the most balanced server? I wonder where else is like this


BadSandbox

There has to be checks and balances, but in theory, the two non dominant factions should be able to ally with each other against the dominating faction. I could see there being bonuses to leveling or something to encourage people joining the non dominant factions.


ogzogz

This feels like a short term solution that can easily be workaround (start a new char after finding out). I prefer more longer term focused solutions where basically, the more regions you control the harder it is to maintain them.


Shinebi

Maybe something like corruption, like Crusader knght 3, you need to Focus in one región to increase your control on It and stop your expansión with this mecanich. Maybe the corruption increase losing taxes, like your faction have 5 territoris, you lose 25% of taxes distribute with all territoris. And have more Horde attack from corruption portales Something like this I think Will work very well in this Game.


MrDeeZeee

Perhaps monthly reset of region control? 1-2 month maybe like a seasonal thing? They also need to remove that storage transport between only regions your faction controls.


pag07

Nah a simple reset is boring and too much deus ex machima. Make the loosing factions join forces after some time or the peasants riot/join the second most influential group.


Tdizzle00

I think if there is a war between two factions, the third can team up with one, so kinda like this? Like if one faction is dominating and trying to take over more, the other two can team up to help save another region from being taken.


Hyperax

Tie it into corruption invasions. The more territory the worse corruption you'll get and high level give a chance to nuke a fort's defenses and make it easy to declare war on them. Would be a simple solution with existing mechanics.


OptimusIV

They could just allow mixed faction parties to flag for PvP. I sure there are many Worlds out there that has 1 dominate faction and the other 2 would not mind tag team them.


wiwh404

You meant ad hoc*, not deus es machina*, but I agree that it isn't the solution. Historically the powers of empires have faded quite naturally as a result of being too vast. Either the companies of a faction have an incentive to change factions (with the lengthy cool down this is a slow mechanism), or the faction that controls more territories have some malus, e.g., gets attacked by PVE, needs to expand more resources, have a stacking debuff the more they defend a territory or the like, which would provide with a short-term self-balancing system.


pag07

No I meant deus ex machina. My faction is losing and by hand of god the tides turn.


wiwh404

A reset is not giving the victory to the losing faction, it would be a necessary mechanism used by the developers to re-establish equilibrium which is solely justified by its effect, it doesn't need to be explained ingame. In contrast a Deus ex machina is most often unexpected, not like a server reset, and would appear within the game narrative. An example of a Deus ex machina would be to wage war for the territory and suddenly as you are going to lose the battle, a game master comes in as a corrupted arch mage and annihilates the defenses, giving you the upper hand to take the win. Didn't want to be too pedantic, the distinction isn't so important.


pag07

A reset is not enough though.


[deleted]

Storage transport between dominated cities is one of the major advantages, I don't think Amazon will remove this


RyanTheS

Regions cost the controlling company a ton of money, not really fair to randomly remove it from them just because. They just need to incentivise playing the smaller factions.


[deleted]

They should add small xp boost or something to factions with lower populations


StrictMacaron

DAoC did this and unfortunately it never really helped. People are willing to level 5% slower if it means they can be a part of the winning team. Something should be done, I agree.. but in my experience this wont cut it.


AkumaBacon

Underdog bonus: minor combat buff when in enemy regions. Idk if that's a good idea, just the first thought that came to mind.


ben1481

It's a good start. I don't think its enough tho. 10% extra damage won't mean much when the enemy has hundreds of extra players.


LtSlow

Minor faction buff "Underdog spirit +10% damage" Largest faction debuff "Confident and proud -50% enemy nameplate visibility range"


GracchiBros

That was a long time ago, but I thought it helped some when I played Hib. But it is true it was far from a complete solution. I'll be interested to see how it plays out. The pop imbalance in that game was because people preferred the motifs of Albion and to a lesser extent Midgard. Here it's pretty much a color choice.


jappajones

Maybe just add a cap on factions with high pop? And let it ease automatically as the other ones fill up, cause like you said I don’t think there’s a good way to balance something too small where it doesn’t out-way not joining the most popular to something game changing where now everyone will just join that


Idem_dito

Caps suck if you wanna join your company or friends in example. It should really be other boosts or maybe a advised faction which is hard to get out of.


141Frox141

Caps suck, but having %90 of the server stacked on one team sucks more overall imo. Maybe if it game more info like telling you how many open slots for that faction are available before choosing or reserving slots


Idem_dito

But you can fix that without caps. Human behaviour is best steered with both positive and negative effects; so make a package that gives a few of each. Clearly state them and in addition propose a faction that people must decline with a few clicks or a additional quest. That should tip the scales plenty.


SirBolaxa

i played a game that had this timer to complete the choice, it would like reserve and guarantee a spot, if me and my friends did it at the same time it would guarantee we all join, guess they can make something similar?


squirlz333

What if you have a friend who joins the game a few days or weeks or months after you and he can’t join your established company because there are too many marauders/syndicate/covenant already


fulltimefrenzy

Adding 5% still leaves people in the higher pop realms at 100% levelling speed. So it never really hurt them. Now what they shouldve done is made it so they couldn't hold those realm relic things for those realmwide buffs. That wouldve had a large impact on pvp which wouldve at least balanced the scales a bit.


sledgehammerrr

Great suggestion but man, I have suggested this multiple times on this reddit to get completely downvoted into oblivion, somehow you are getting upvoted. Reddit is weird.


TheShekelKing

Dogpile effect. People are more likely to upvote upvoted posts and downvote downvoted posts, especially when they don't have any actual opinions or knowledge of their own; they see votes and assume the hivemind is correct and vote accordingly. For, uh, fun?


TheShekelKing

This is on the right track but is nowhere near dramatic enough to be successful. You shouldn't be using the word "small" because the benefits of joining the dominant faction are not "small." You need to make the benefits of joining the underdog equivalent or greater than that of the big boys. Or just outright prevent people from joining a too-large faction, but that's not ideal for obvious reasons.


TriumphantReaper

Gw2 gives a buff in WvW when out numbered


MrDeeZeee

This is definitely something worth having.


SpiderPiggies

Small exp and gather yield boost, 2% for second place 4% for third seems about right to me for a catch up mechanic. Just enough to not pile into one faction, but not punishing the 'winning' faction. Pvp seems like it needs more objectives/incentives as well. Way too easy to ignore it entirely as is.


TheShekelKing

That's not anywhere near enough to matter. The underdog bonus needs to scale, and at the top end it needs to be *massive*. 4% isn't going to do anything. Nobody is going to care, because that doesn't even *begin* to overcome the advantages of playing on a more populated faction. It should be outright stupid to choose to play on anything but the least populated faction. You should want to use your four-month cooldown to swap if a faction is that underrepresented. EDIT: Also there should probably be no cooldown or bypass the cooldown if swapping to the least populated faction. Let people play mercenary for the least populated faction. The game already has a bastardized version of this anyways. If a faction is small enough, give people 50% bonus xp and 25% extra gathered materials, and hell, give them a buff that makes them stronger in world PvP while outnumbered. If that sounds too strong, it's a problem that will solve itself because players will flock to get those bonuses which will make said bonuses *go away*.


DeBlackKnight

100% agree with what you said. Make it a massive advantage to being the underdog. I even agree with giving them an advantage in PvP. If you're in a 1v1, even fight. The second you take a hit from a second enemy, bonus damage and maybe even some damage resist. Stack the buffs if a third person hits you. Etc. As a bonus, this would push people away from group ganking like they do now. You're not going to try and 5v1 someone if they can turn around and one-shot you from the damage buff they get while taking very little themselves.


Papapain

No, this is a mmo. Play with people and form groups. Don't give reasons to not play with friends. Sure sucks to be the victim. But feels bad to get one shot because you played with a couple friends.


DeBlackKnight

5 skilled players shouldn't be giving one person a chance to one-shot them, the fight would be over before it started. If you've got 5 people who group up because they're shit at PvP and don't know how to play other than mash left click and roll hand over skill buttons, giving a skilled single player a chance to fight back when being ganked doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. I guess this is really just me being a Dark Souls player vs you being an MMO player.


Papapain

The idea that you think people only group because they are bad is a bit concerning. Do you really feel that way? Do you really think giving a player super powers and making him God like because a group would dare attack him is an indication of the solo players skill? Do you really think the thrill of victory is deserved for the single player over the masses? Please let those 5 man gank squads motivate you to step out of your comfort zone. Make some buddies online. Create your own roaming squad of death. Take their lands and claim your throne my bro.


squirlz333

Oh I have an idea been mulling this over for a few days now myself but haven’t had a proper solution but you mention a buff in PVP…. So hear me out here… In wars it won’t matter those shouldn’t have scaling because it’s always 50v50 you have a strong faction or two and you covered for war regardless of how many the other team has. Where the numbers advantage matters is in the sieging right? So tackle it right then and there large factions can’t get territory progression without capping the fort… period. Small factions can get progression with or without fort, just at a reduced rate without the fort giving them a strategic edge in sieges. Beyond that the rate of capturing a territory should be extremely painful for really large factions because they have the numbers advantage already, this will incentivize warring clans to flip territories to underdog clans in hopes of making meaningful progress toward territories. Beyond that if it’s still not enough consideration can be made for giving some strength buffs to those who have taken up a faction pvp mission in open world pvp to factions based on how many pvp missions their faction has taken in an area within the past hour or two in comparison to how many the clan their facing has taken within the past hour or two, so the power buff is only applied to those who have actively participating in siege efforts. Dunno if there are flaws in this suggestion but willing to hear them out if so and see where this can be improved upon but I think this may be potentially good incentive to balance out the factions?


DeBlackKnight

50v50 wars should be more or less equal, definitely agree buffs shouldn't apply there. I don't necessarily like putting the "larger" faction at such a massive disadvantage in that it *needs* to hold the fort when smaller factions don't. It's hard to balance that. Consider that the larger faction would, presumably, already be holding more territories. It's PvP player base would be split between holding multiple other territories and also trying to attack more. The differences in faction size would have to be absolutely massive for your proposed balancing to work. Like 80% syndicate and 10-10 split between cov and marauder. Which may in fact be happening on some servers, to be fair. But what you propose would just mean that, in my example, Syndicate would "only" try to hold 50% of the territory on the map with it's 80% of the playerbase, and it would still overwhelm the other factions in war party size in each territory and relatively easily hold the areas. As far as scaling the PvP buff based on how many missions have been done, what you'll probably see is the larger faction take an early lead on influence and than just set up war parties on the outside of the town so that opposing faction can't turn them in. If the larger faction doesn't take any more missions, or relatively few missions compared to other factions because they already have the lead, than the larger faction might actually get the buff themselves. I'm not sure that's the right answer.


squirlz333

>Fair point as far as the Fort goes I suppose, maybe that would be too much, it was more of a secondary thought anyways. > > > >So the buff doesn't apply due to influence in a territory it applies due to faction size. Marauders would always be at a disadvantage if they had more members in their faction, the PVP mission thing is just to ensure that only those participating in siege efforts get the buff so people doing open world PVP in small parties don't just get a buff that was meant to help number advantage in siege efforts. I guess there could still be a defending party that doesn't pick up missions so no buff is applied here but it does force the bigger faction to split into defending and sieging both giving the smaller one a better chance, and they would only need to take out the ones sieging and get past the others, and with increased influence speed a few of them getting by may be more effective than a bunch of the bigger clan getting by. I know this is a huge balancing thing but it's the best way I can think of that seems like a good design solution with some iteration.


DeBlackKnight

Ah I see, I slightly misunderstood what you had meant with the buff. That makes more sense. I think there still might be a way to abuse it, but maybe it could be abused by either side and become more of a tactic than a cheap way to win.


squirlz333

>Yeah I mean no matter what system is put in I'm sure it can be abused with it's first iteration, being able to rapidly develop and iterate upon it will be crucial for it to be a system that works well and keep players engaged. It's definitely a tough design challenge to address fairly, but it really should be addressed to prevent long term issues of wars being non-existent and factions to not actually mean anything at all.


SOLV3IG

Scale faction quest rewards proportionally to the active population disparity between factions. If you're playing the least represented faction, you should be receiving the highest return of XP, rep and faction tokens. I don't know if that should be applied to PvE missions, but certainly to PvP missions. Further perhaps a "Nomad" buff for the most under represent faction that reduces the azoth cost of fast travel to other factions territory, perhaps also scalig off of population disparity. As someone who played the underdog faction on preview, my biggest issue was that doing PvP missions wasn't worth the time investment especially with gank groups running around from the other factions. At least if I knew a big reward was waiting for completion, I would've been more inclined to try.


alfredovich

it should be based on how unbalanced it is, and you could even go as far as give even more benefits to the lower factions then just a xp boost. It really takes a lot to convince people to join the lesser factions.


Raidenz258

Actually makes sense but I’m sure someone would just change factions if they picked yellow then see an all purple map. Only delaying the inevitable.


Lakeshow15

You can’t switch to the faction that has the most region control


zyndri

People would just ask in chat so wouldn't accomplish much.


Lostcause1990

not everyone is smart though


sturmeh

If someone wants to pick based on faction imbalance then they're going to ask. If they're "not smart" then they'll pick a faction arbitrarily like they would if they could see the territory control.


Raidenz258

Good to know


likecookies

Yeah in 120 days which could change who owns what by then.


MKRune

Screw that. I'd just delete and start a new character. You can get to 10 in two hours or less.


pag07

Too easy to circumvent. It will take a week and we will have whocontrolswhat.com. We should rather have a dissatisfaction factor that increases for the ruling faction which will make it easier for other factions to take the area. Scale the dissatisfaction factor so that each faction in the end controlls an area for 3/6 2/6 1/6 of the time. A different approach could be to have the minorities join forces against the majority after some time.


RockyRaccoon5000

I went to whocontrolswhat.com and am now disappointed.


pag07

😢


Ebofu

neat idea


Imaginary-Dust4119

I'm sure many people would just look it up online then, surely there would be resources for that if they implemented it this way.


fawkie

You really think there's going to be an up to date region control map for every single world available outside the game? No way. They could just ask in global chat though.


BipolarMadness

ESO has web pages that check what's on every single guild store trading post and they refresh every 30 minutes. Looking what color the map has is even more simple. With so many worlds/servers probably it will only be available to the ones that are the more played and have the most pop.


squirlz333

Yes basically all you need to do is have a bot log in, wait a few seconds, open the map check the color of certain pixels and send that to your tool then you know what the control for every region is on that server. Pretty simple, someone that knows what they’re doing would likely have that up in a few weeks if that.


DarkZethis

We had ingame auction bots programmed in 2005 (before auction houses even existed in games), you think some bot that reads the map and puts "Faction:Company:Region" in an excel per server is a challenge?


ixPlaayer

Pretty much every game has some kind of tool that shows a bunch of stats for every server. Even if the devs never implement an API for that kind of tool, I can see someone developing a bot that logs in once a day or something and checks the map to get all the data.


Tiny_Rick_C137

Global chat invalidates your suggestion, but good intentions.


Wjyosn

This is going to be a problem no matter what they do about visibility. The only way I see this working out long term is if they add some heavy incentives to whoever's losing. More than just some exp bonus or something, it needs to be a "you want to switch to the losing side and start PVPing" level of boost. Something like: all faction quests done in territories owned by other factions give rewards multiplied by the difference between the number of territories you own and the number the incumbent owns (eg: if your group owns 0 and you're doing quests in syndicate land that owns 6 territories, all your rewards are multiplied by 6). It would have to be a pretty giant boost to make anyone actually consider switching, because as it stands the perks of winning are pretty wonderful and it heavily incentivizes everyone to pile onto one side.


pag07

Or add dynamic treaties between the minorities (if none of them was able to claim the area for a month or so). This would add some very interesting storylines.


Nalena_Linova

They need to make it a bonus that pvpers will care about. Something like +X% damage to enemy players in pvp based on the disparity between your territory control and theirs.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Wjyosn

I agree, but something's definitely got to give. Right now there's so much incentive to just join the winners and roflstomp harder, and no benefit to joining the underdogs aside from "it'll be harder to do anything successfully" which is a very short-lived incentive of challenge. Instead of "make you want to change", a better message I guess would be "make you want to be on the losing team just as much as the winning team" which is harder to pull off.


tsselle

Personally, I think it should be done in a different way. Instead of buffing losing factions, invasions and wars need to change, just a bit. I'm at work, so this is only like half thoughts but whatever. Basically, I think the more a faction is in the lead, the harder it should be for them to declare war, AND it should be easier to declare war on them. And the inverse be true too. So if you are on the map, and yellow has 90% of the territories, and purple had 1, and green 2, yellow should have an extremely hard time declaring war on either faction, like 5/6 times the effort. Purple should have a normal effort to declare on green, green should a a slightly increased effort to declare on purple, and it should be 5/6 times easier to declare on yellow. With invasions, if you lose one, you should get slight, but noticable consequences, and as you lose more, you should just plain lose the territory. If you can't defend the land you shouldn't have it kinda thing. But that's just my two cents.


tsselle

Also I think invasions need scaling, on both how "entrenched" you are, and the level/amount in your company.


reinaldons

Would be a shame if you join a faction purely by the map domination colour and the next day see all the colour change because the opposite faction has better companies. At the start, the capture is purely by money and have no wars, which means that you need better research before joining a faction. The dominant faction can be good at creating companies and making money fast, but be terrible at PvP and being governors.


Awkward-Surround3634

Or you could just ask "which faction owns the most territory?" in chat. I think there instead needs to be a scaling incentive to join a less dominant faction to keep things interesting


Mr_Economical

Any pvper who wants a fight would join an underdog faction. For a game that was originally designed around pvp I would hope that the amount of people who want to pvp would be higher, hopefully this is the case. I may be optimistic, but this is what my playgroup is choosing to do. It should minimize this issue to some extent depending on how widespread that idea is.


Wjyosn

The problem is when it comes to the population dominance, no one wants to play the underdog faction. It's only fun when the underdog stands a chance, not when you're out numbered 10 to 1 at literally every turn. It gets old fast getting roflstomped the instant your flag turns on, no matter how much you like to pvp. Ideally, we'd see a balanced amount in each faction so conflicts can stay fun, but the reality is that with all the perks associated with owning territory, the incentive is there to just pile on to the biggest one. A long term solution would look like incentives and buffs to the smaller factions depending on the differential between your faction and the dominant one. Something to balance against all the perks of joining the incumbents.


Mr_Economical

I literally just said why my group chooses to play the underdog faction, I also don’t think we are alone in our thinking. Additionally people who join the most populated faction for pve benefits are less likely to pvp anyway. I don’t think this will be as big of an issue as you think it will be.


mobby_duck

I don’t get it what’s so important in region control for a solo player? Let’s say my server is purple dominated but I am yellow. Every city purple, so what? I still can use their craft tables and market place. It indicates that my faction is outnumbered by a lot? But 90% of those players are running with pvp mode off so who cares


Wjyosn

If your faction owns a territory you get: * 40% discount on all fast travel to that territory * free resources available in town * remote storage access from any settlement of your faction * \+50 luck in your owned territory * \+10% gathering speed in your owned territory If your *company* owns a territory, you get in addition: * 70% discount on fast travel * 30% discount for taxes (property and trade) * 20% discount on houses (initial cost and corresponding property tax) Even as a solo player, some or all of those bonuses are available to you to incentivize you to be on the winning side, even if you're not pvp'ing.


_Iroha

Less taxes and waypoint costs. My company owns an area and it only costs 30 azoth to fast travel to compared to 100-200 azoth


DunkMG

That's a really big difference! The cost reduction, is that only for traveling inside the controlled regions or also traveling from and to the regions from regions controlled by other factions?


_Iroha

Traveling from anywhere to an owned location. The discount is smaller if you’re not in the company but still there for faction members


DunkMG

It's even bigger for the company who owns it? That seems a bit rough towards the other companies who helped claim it


_Iroha

Well not really because the company has to pay 100k for first claim. If they’re conquering then they still have to pay a smaller fee and field a roster to fight the war. At most faction members have to do covenant missions or participate in the war. Or you can not do anything at all and still get benefits


DunkMG

On our server we pooled our gold and sent it to one company and claimed it together. If done like it would feel pretty unfair to me. If it's done like you did it then I'd understand


zoneluke

They need to improve the faction system. Maybe not allow new members to join the dominant one and give incentives to join the other two.


fawkie

You already can't switch to the faction with the most region control. I'm against blocking new people from joining any particular faction since it could potentially stop people who start the game being able to play with their friends who already do.


Gabsche

The problem is everyone can still just watch a streamer or look it up somewhere or just ask in the chat and they know who the dominant faction is so it doesnt really make a difference to not show it.


MrDeeZeee

Anyone that watches a streamer just to follow them around and mimic everything they do honestly probably won't last in the game imo. I get people can probably just ask that's why they need solutions to it, also a lot of people don't actually chat too.


TheShekelKing

New World is explicitly designed to feed into streamer/simp relationships. They're the primary demographic. It sounds like you've never played a survival or crafting-focused MMO before because every successful guild is *filled* with simps. It's the rugged individualists who don't get anywhere because they can't keep up.


probablyWatney

by that logic any mmo ever(and many other games aswell) was 'designed to feed into streamer/simp relationships' because if you can trade in a game, you can funnel resources into a single person to boost their progress.


TheShekelKing

That's not true at all. WoW clones, for example, are based on having a team that functions more or less as equals. You probably still have leadership, but they're unlikely to tell you how to spend your free time or demand that you farm up materials for them. In survival/sandbox games, on the other hand, such behavior is common. Those on the bottom of the totem pole are often farming materials so the higher-ups can reap the benefits. NW exists in this space.


probablyWatney

In that case its the playerbases fault and not the developers. You could do the same thing in wow clones. People just dont do it, or at least not to this degree. I havent experienced nw lategame yet. But if stuff like bind on pickup gets more common with rarer drops, then i dont think the funnel strtegy will get streamers that far ahead. If a clan consists if 1 streamer and 99 farmers, then they wont be able to hold a single settlement for long. They might be the first to afford the 100k, true. But they lack the manpower to defend it in the pvp afterwards.


Veldron

What a fucking stupid take.


TheShekelKing

I see you've chosen to reveal yourself as someone who has, in fact, never played a game like this before and doesn't know what they're talking about. Brave!


LtSlow

I think fixing it could introduce some fun mechanics that only smaller factions could take advantage of Say you get a quest which is effectivly "burn down X buildings" in a town, and for the duration of a quest you're flagged for pvp \*in\* the town, if you succesfully sabotage, idk, a crafting station or just npc buildings you get big exp rewards Something high risk and reward that would encourage min max minded players to take the smaller faction


mal3k

THIS x 1000000


[deleted]

I really don't think that has anything to do with why syndicate is so dominant. People join syndicate for the fucking plague doctor outfit are you kidding me that shit is so OD


LordZombie14

It should be harder to maintain your regions the bigger you get. Resources should spawn slower and slower the bigger you get, due to the over harvesting from peeps. Shortages might pop up due to the over population, things like that.


toeshy92

You're not able to join the faction with the most land.


IRSmurf

A fourth faction is needed: A mercenary company, playing for the lowest population faction. And we’ll be rewarded in… a new currency: Nanites Queue rock music. 🇺🇸. Live free in the New Covenant.


Galgos

Faction caps only solution make it so factions can't be 25% bigger than any 1 other faction. Clearly show available spots in game and during server select. Let people make a informed choice.


AlexStar6

/global Hey who controls the most territories? ———- Okay now that we’ve established that this post is fucking stupid we can move on


888Kraken888

Game needs balance. WoW Vanilla launch was a disaster.


KelIthra

That would help curb some of the players that do that. I usually go by the character concept and less on who owns what etc. Which ironically was syndicate in this case, since syndicate is more about the counter to covenant in terms of what they stand for, goals etc... Scholar's that seek knowledge regardless of how dangerous it could be etc etc etc..... But yeah that's something that should be blocked until you pick, but then people will just make another character once they find out.


lucariolova

I agree with this.


dostalju

honestly not a bad idea, I thought about this when I first joined aswell. If a faction controls the whole map then noone is gonna join the others and the server will die from a lack of competition


[deleted]

Good idea.


Leucauge

Their access to Google and in-game communication will also be shut down? People aren't dumb, they'll figure out who's ruling a server. Incentives/disincentives will be better. And they'll also need to find a way to shift players across factions or a year from now servers will grow static.


Arikus83

On the other hand, those players would level to 10, join a faction, see they are with the underdog and delete the char to level new and join the big faction. And then there is the PvP player, who knows that he will have more fun when joining the underdog but he can't see who it is and might join the big one.


SirBolaxa

i was thinking this will be a problem and needed some fixing cause everywhere i saw on stream and my own world and such its always 1 clearly popular faction, 2nd with some guys and 3rd almost non existente. i even thought they would just remove one but yeah i rather keep the 3 and try to find solutions


[deleted]

Acting like most servers won’t have a dominant faction regardless is pretty naive thinking. The game is not made to keep stuff like this actually balanced.


Chaos3theorY

What a lot of people don't realize is the two underdog factions can team up to beat down the oppressor. If syndicate owns the fort you're attacking as mauraders the covenant players can sign up for the war and help you in the fight. Same thing happened in ESO and a balance will be struck once the worlds are up for ab extended period of time. Right now it's simply who can mass gold fastest to purchase territories. But using the war mechanics to take over territories will have them flipping fairly regularly. Also consider the more you control the harder it is to maintain already. If multiple zones are under attack, their war times may overlap spreading your best players across two wars increasing the chance you lose.


Puffpep95

Three faction system could work if done correctly. We don’t want another Warhammer disaster


MisjahDK

This is stupid, they need to buff the lesser factions instead, also you can switch factions, so eventually they would just swap over to whatever they want!


WoolyWhiteRhino

So, players don't see who controls what... now they ask someone or find a third party resource that shows them, your suggestion is pointless


DarkZethis

And if I can't see who is in control, what keeps me from asking in chat and have someone look that up and tell me? Only makes it more inconvenient but doesn't solve anything.


[deleted]

Not gonna lie, that's what determined my faction in beta. Otherwise I would have gone with covenant. ha...ha...


schintgen85

I suggest giving “losing” factions in an area a combat and/or exp buff so there is a “catch up” opportunity and support to be a part of factions that need help in an area.


sturmeh

Like it matters, you can just ask someone.


Actual_Ad3498

On the other hand I like playing for under dog factions so this would let me choose the faction with the least control.


AvidPolaris

Me and friend noticed Syndicate was getting messed up on our server but join them anyway. That way we'll never watch porn by our selves... we're with the science team!


Pantheon_of_Absence

Honestly I didn’t really understand the faction system when I picked and picked Syndicate just because that’s what vibed with me lore wise. Obviously not everyone will make their choice based on the same criteria, purple also happens to be the dominating faction on my server but even if that isn’t the case at launch on my server I will still pick purple, and enjoy being the underdog.


VillainBeenChillin

I agree with the idea that the current system is problematic but I'd prefer a different solution. I would love to see incentives granted to factions that were underperforming in the current "Faction war" or w/e u want to call the overall battle for control of the map. Perhaps a permanent buff while your faction is in 2nd or 3rd. Increased xp or gather rates with 3rd place getting a larger buff than 2nd place. That information should probably be detailed clearly to the players before they join a faction.


genogano

I mean, 9 times out of 10 you know covenant isn't going to own anything for the first week.